January 17, 2011Dear editor:Why do some people not just leave well enough alone? We need to leave the metro police and sheriff’s department the same.They are doing just fine in my eyes. If they change the department, we will have to have a new metro chief at taxpayers’ expense, another building at taxpayers’ expense, more metro officers at taxpayers’ expense. The sheriff’s department will lose reserve officers. Right now they have one reserve officer for every officer in the sheriff’s office. Some do it for free; some get paid.

January 17, 2011Last week I wrote about country singer Johnny Cash after a visit to his boyhood home, but I can’t remember the last time I wrote about Elvis Presley, so I figure I’m about due. (A few readers have said I write too much about the entertainer, however, those columns are ones in which I’ve received more nice comments.)Elvis would have turned 76 on Jan. 8 and like most years Luke and I traveled to Memphis to partake in some of the events scheduled around the big day.

January 17, 2011LITTLE ROCK — It didn’t take long for the first dispute of the 88th General Assembly to surface.Freshmen legislators took their oaths of office on Monday. On Thursday the House of Representatives sent the General Appropriation bill back to committee, rather than approve it and send it to the Senate. It was a signal that this legislative session will not be “business as usual.”

January 14, 2011Jana Wood’s “Arkansas: An Explorer’s Guide” is the definitive guide to enjoying The Natural State. Wood, a native Arkansan and former communications director for the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism, is both knowledgeable and passionate; her love for the state and its people and places comes through on every page of this well-written, easy to use travel guide.

January 14, 2011Each Jan. 16, Americans are supposed to celebrate Religious Freedom Day, our least known, most neglected national holiday — except, perhaps, for the even more obscure Bill of Rights Day widely ignored every Dec. 15.

January 13, 2011Growing up, my father — now retired from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department after 35 years of service — frequently took me shooting and to just about every gun show within a 100-mile radius of our Southern California home.In fact, as I write this, several of the guns from his collection are on display at the National Firearms Museum in Fairfax, Virginia.I may be a progressive but I have absolutely no problem with private gun ownership.

January 13, 2011An Open Letter to Congress:I know you’re scared.One of your members was gunned down in public. Six people are dead, including a nine-year-old little girl, a third grade student council member who wanted to see democracy in action.You can pretend this was an isolated incident.Or, you can act like real leaders and have the courage to confront a root problem.Your lives may be at stake. Not just your political life, your real life.Do you really want to continue to claim that vitriolic and violent language isn’t a problem?

January 13, 2011The USA Today article almost caused me to drive off a bridge to nowhere.Our government can’t even squander our money efficiently — particularly where earmarks are concerned.Earmarks, says FactCheck.org, “are government funds that are allocated by a legislator for a particular pet project, often without proper review.”Often slipped into large authorization bills — or the 13 appropriation bills that fund the federal government every year — earmarks tend to be concealed.

January 12, 2011How did you choose your profession?Did you lie awake at night as a child fantasizing about spending 10 hours a day hunched over a computer?If you’re like most people, you probably fell into your profession.When I was a kid, my secret dream was to be a tele-evangelist. But I gave up on that after I told my mother and she informed me that I’d have to start going to church.

January 12, 2011Last Saturday morning 20 people were shot in a Tucson Safeway parking lot by a 22-year-old who stated on YouTube he “won’t pay debt with a currency that’s not backed by gold and silver.” Fifteen minutes after the news broke, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin tweeted, “The price of gold today is at $1,368.90 an ounce.”Coincidence?Yes.